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Re: A "hard line" on users placing files on debian's "turf"?



This one slipped by me without comment when it appeared.

On Mon Aug 21, mdw@CS.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh) said:

> fea@fea.rrd.ornl.gov (James D. Freels) writes:
> > But won't it be best to install such things under the /usr/local tree?
> [...]
> What Debian can do is flag any files in /usr/bin, etc. which aren't
> contained in the listings for the various installed packages. So, 
> at upgrade time, these files can either be saved or overwritten.
> If it so happens that someone overwrites a Debian-installed file 
> in /usr/bin, that should be their own problem (e.g., assume they
> wanted to do that, which is often true). 

One situation which this doesn't address is where a user installs
foo.deb, which contains /usr/bin/bar (and other files), then manually
replaces /usr/bin/bar with a non-debian version, then upgrades foo.deb.
The user-installed file /usr/bin/bar will be silently overwritten during
the package upgrade.

The user overwrote a Debian-installed file in /usr/bin, and that
did indeed turn out to be their own problem when they later trashed
the file unintentionally by upgrading a package which overwrote that
file again (e.g., we didn't recognize that they had done that).

>[...]


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